Sun, 7/13/08

Yellowstone NP, WY: Well, we had some excitement today. We decided to just kick back today to give Mike a chance to get some rest. I did some cleaning and Mike put away the grey water tote and some other things. We were both inside fixing some lunch and out the window I saw something run by our camper. Thought it was dogs at first, but then they came back and I realized it was two mule deer doe. We’re at the end of our loop and across the road from our site is dense pine forest. They ran to the edge of the forest on the other side of the road from us. They stayed on the fringes looking at us—or we thought they were looking at us. We came out to watch them for awhile. Then they started walking back about 4 sites down from us again. They were acting strange. We followed them and then they started over to the camp sites and low and behold here comes this coyote. They were stalking that coyote and weren’t going to give up until they got him. Those two doe chased that coyote right in front of our site and back into the forest. We lost track of the coyote and eventually the deer wandered off deeper into the forest. We were standing there talking with a couple of guys three sites down from us and saw the coyote again heading the other direction. I was sitting outside reading a little later and saw a flash of grey fur heading back to where the deer went. Walked into the woods a little bit but couldn’t see anything. Hope he’s not after a fawn or something. We feel pretty special. We have guard deer. Doesn’t get any better than that. Another spectacular day. Beautiful blue sky with no clouds and pretty warm—at least in the sun. P.S. At about 10:00 a whole group of coyotes were in the road about 50 feet from our camp site just howling away. Mike went out to check them out. Said there were about 5 or 6 of them sitting in the middle of the road having a good old time.